By Aaron Shafovaloff
September 28, 2024

Introduction

In 1844 Joseph Smith preached a sermon at General Conference called the King Follett Discourse. In it he taught that, “God Himself was once as we are now, and is an exalted man…” And, “We have imagined and supposed that God was God from all eternity. I will refute that idea…”, And, “You have got to learn how to be Gods yourselves… the same as all Gods have done before you.”

In a subsequent sermon known as the “Sermon in the Grove”, Smith reinforced this idea by teaching that Heavenly Father himself has a Father. Since then, Latter-day Saints have often used the Lorenzo Snow couplet — “As man is God once was; As God is, man may be” — as a vehicle for summarizing Smith’s teaching. LDS leaders have historically developed this idea in various ways. I recommend these two overviews in Volume 60, Issue 3 of BYU Studies Quarterly (link 1, link 2).

This has resulted in affirming that sinners can someday be exalted as Heavenly Parents over other worlds.

Over a decade ago, I started a project called GodNeverSinned.com. I asked Latter-day Saints if they believed Heavenly Father was once perhaps a sinful mortal prior to his exaltation. About one-third conclusively answered in the negative, sometimes inferring from Joseph Smith’s use of John 5:19 that the Father was a sinless mortal like Jesus, perhaps even as a Savior for other worlds.

About two-thirds instead essentially answered, “yes”, Heavenly Father was once perhaps a sinful mortal, with varying degrees of probability and indeterminacy. FAIR, an LDS apologetics website, even published a page affirming that, “For some… the idea that God may have once been a sinner like us gives added hope and faith in the atonement.”

The same page goes on to ask, concerning whether God may have once been a sinner, “Does it really matter all that much?”

Though Latter-day Saints are divided over whether Heavenly Father may have once been a sinful mortal, they seem more united on the position that, even if God had previously sinned, that it would not matter, either systematically, or existentially. I would like to give you six reasons why it matters that God never was a sinful mortal.

1. God’s eternally perfect perfections

The first reason is the united beauty of God’s eternally perfect perfections. Here I mean that: all of God’s perfections describe all of God, and that all of his perfections describe all his other perfections. He is not just perfect, but eternally perfectly perfect.

Consider Revelation 1:8. “I am the Alpha and the Omega,’ says the Lord God, ‘who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.’” Note here that God is not merely Almighty, but he is eternally Almighty. His eternality is omnipotent. And his omnipotence is eternal. And he is not to be worshiped merely for who he is, but also who he always was.

Look also at how the angels worship God in Revelation 4:8. “Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come!” God is not merely holy, he is supremely holy. Again, God is worshiped not merely for who he is, but also for who he always was. His power is eternally holy. And his holiness is eternally omnipotent. For the angels, this isn’t a point to score in a debate. This matters because it is central to worship. Day and night they never stop saying:, “Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come!”

2. Humility and encouragement

Secondly, that God was God from everlasting is cause for our humility and encouragement. In Psalm 90:2 we read, “From everlasting to everlasting you are God… So teach us to number our days.” In Deuteronomy 33:27, God’s eternality is our shelter: “The eternal God is your refuge, and his everlasting arms are under you.” In Habakkuk 1:12, this is reason for our comfort and trust. “Are you not from everlasting, O Lord my God, my Holy One? We shall not die.”

If God was a sinful mortal, he would not be God from everlasting, and he would not be able to provide ultimate protection and comfort. Nor would he be ultimately trustworthy.

3. God is ultimate

And that brings us to our third reason: that God is ultimate. In Hebrews 6:13 we read that God has “no one greater by whom to swear” so, “he swore by himself.” In Exodus 3:14, “God said to Moses, ‘I AM WHO I AM’” (Exodus 3:14). God is not defined by something other than himself. He does not participate in something bigger than himself. He doesn’t conform to something else and he doesn’t abide by a higher law. He is his own highest standard. 

He isn’t a member of a larger class. He isn’t of a species of beings. This is why the Israelites confessed together, “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one” (Deuteronomy 6:4). He wasn’t merely their particular God in covenant with them. He is also singular in his ultimacy. He is incomparable and supreme and unique.

If God were once a sinful mortal, then none of this would be true. He would have been under the judgment of another, having transgressed a higher law than himself, in need of forgiveness from another, receiving the atonement of another, and under the superiority of another. He would not be the great I AM.

If God was once a sinful mortal who later became loving, he would have to say, “I love because someone else first loved me” (1 John 4:19). But the Bible does not ascribe a secondary love to God. After all, God is not merely loving. 1 John 4:8 says, “God is love.” God is not merely bright. Rather, “God is light” (1 John 1:5). If God was a sinful mortal in the past, he would not be love itself or light itself or truth itself. He would not be ultimate. He would be someone who conformed to or who imitated or participated in those greater realities than himself.

4. Aseity → grace

Our fourth reason is the relationship between God’s aseity to grace. Please take this term, aseity, home with you. It’s a gorgeous doctrine. Aseity means that the fountain of God’s abundant life has always been of himself (a se). Look at Romans 11:34-36 with me:

“‘For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counselor?’ ‘Or who has given a gift to him that he might be repaid?’ For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen.”

See here again that God is celebrated, not merely for who he is, but for who he always has been. No one has ever taught him anything. He knows everything, but learned nothing. No one has ever given him a gift. Jesus taught, “It is more blessed to give than to receive” (Acts 20:35). This makes God the most blessed being because he has only ever given. He has never been a beneficiary. He has only ever been a benefactor. He has never received what he did not have. All things are from him, through him, and to him. 

Because God has always been his own fountain of life (Psalm 36:9), and never drank from another fountain, because God has always—as it were—breathed his own life and never been given breath from another, because God has always only been from himself, through himself, and to himself, without any dependence on another, he best is able to give. The one who has everything, yet never has received anything, is the best gift-giver. The one who has never needed anything, can best provide. The one who has never needed grace can best give grace.

If God was once a sinner, he would have needed grace, and therefore he would not be the most blessed giver of grace.

5. The boasting principle

Our fifth reason is the boasting principle. You can see this at work in 1 Corinthians 4:7, where Paul says,

“What do you have that you did not receive? If then you received it, why do you boast as if you did not receive it?”

Another way to say this is: we can’t brag as though what we have came from us. Everything we have is from God. This makes us very different from God. Only God has always been from himself and through himself and to himself. So, he can alone properly boast in himself. And this is all over scripture. See especially Isaiah 40-48. God boasts in himself as the incomparable unique source of everything good and true and beautiful. He is the first and the last. He is the one who never learned, and he will not share his glory with another.

Man is doubly unable to boast himself. To start, we are creatures, and we depend on God for our every existence.  Paul says of man’s dependence on God, “In him we live and move and have our being.” (Acts 17:28)

Additionally, we are sinners. And salvation is designed to prevent boasting in ourselves and instead to highlight God’s aseity. Consider Ephesians 2:8-9:

“For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.”

Thus, the atonement is not designed to enable us to boast in ourselves, or to have others boast in us. Rather the atonement forgives and purifies people into glorified beings who boast in God as the source of all things. “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord” (1 Corinthians 1:31).

If God was a sinner, cleansed by an atonement, then he could not rightly boast himself, nor command us to boast in him. If such a god boasted, we should say with Paul to him, “What do you have that you did not receive? If then you received it, why do you boast as if you did not receive it?”

6. True worship

Finally, it matters existentially whether God was a sinner, because true worship concerns itself with the very truth and nature of God. Jesus says, “this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent” (John 17:3). Appealing to the very nature of God, Jesus says to the woman the well, that:

“True worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” (John 4:23-24)

The first four of the Ten Commandments concern our worship toward God, and the greatest of the commandments is to love God with all our heart and soul and mind and strength. Good works that are indifferent to the eternally unique nature of God are in fact bad works. They are not done to God’s glory, they are not done in the spirit of truth, and they are not done in dependence upon ultimate grace.

Conclusion

In conclusion, it is not incidental or non-essential whether God ever sinned. It systematically and existentially matters because of the unity of God’s eternally perfect perfections. Because it is the basis for humility and encouragement. Because God is ultimate. Because his eternally unique aseity is the basis for his grace. Because the atonement forgives and cleanses sinners from boasting in themselves, to boast instead in the one who alone has never received what he has. And because true worshipers worship the Father in spirit and truth.

This existentially matters. It concerns the whole Christian life, all of our works, and all of our nitty-gritty daily ordinary faith and dependence and worship and obedience and fellowship and community and the very meaning of life. Ultimately, it should matter to us, because it matters to God. If you don’t think this matters, then I call you to repent, and to join the angels who throughout this whole presentation have never stopped saying,

“Holy, holy, holy… the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come!”

Mentioned in the Dialog

Jeffrey Tucker of the Church History Library:

“On April 7, 1844, Joseph Smith delivered a general conference talk to approximately 20,000 people in Nauvoo; it would be one of the last public sermons he gave before his martyrdom. The sermon—often called the King Follett discourse or King Follett sermon, as it was prompted by the death of King Follett, a Nauvoo Latter-day Saint—has been hailed by historians both in and out of the Church as a landmark moment in Church history and “one of the truly remarkable sermons ever preached in America.” Excerpts from it frequently appear in Church materials, and it remains popular among Church members, historians, and others researching Church history and Joseph Smith’s life.” (Researching the King Follett Discourse)

BYU professor Rodney Turner:

“[O]pinion is divided as to how closely the Son’s career paralleled that of his Father . . . These and the Prophet’s earlier remarks are believed by some to infer that our God and his father once sacrificed their lives in a manner similar to the atonement of Jesus Christ. It is argued that the Prophet’s words suggest that these gods did not simply live and die as all men do, they ‘laid down’ and ‘took up’ their lives in the context of sacrifice . . . This extrapolated doctrine rests upon a somewhat inadequate, if not shaky, foundation. Indeed, it is highly doubtful. The basic process of laying down and taking up one’s life is similar for all even though it is not identical for all (“The Doctrine of the Firstborn and Only Begotten,” in The Pearl of Great Price: Revelations from God [Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University, 1989], 91-117).”